


truths we won't tell

by PoeticallyIrritating



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 03:01:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4084102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoeticallyIrritating/pseuds/PoeticallyIrritating
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cosima in Shay’s bed, trying to forget. Equal parts Cosima/Shay and Cosima/Delphine; set during s3e6.</p>
            </blockquote>





	truths we won't tell

**Author's Note:**

> it's been forever since i've posted new ob fic, but i'm having a lot of feelings about girls kissing.

Delphine’s different. Afterwards, Felix says something biting about her  _uber bitch_ hair and Cosima laughs, as if she doesn’t feel like her heart’s about to stop. But it’s not that. It’s more like—Delphine is  _cold._ Her eyes have gone hard and steely, like they could pierce flesh. Cosima wants to cry again, seeing her, and her skin flushes fever-hot when Delphine opens a file and her fingers curl around it in a way that Cosima recognizes in some bone-deep part of her. And then she says it, what Cosima’s been willing her not to say this whole time.

_I miss you._

Cosima’s never been good with this. The not-crying thing, the seeming-cool-and-stoic thing. She tries, at least. She doesn’t collapse in a heap, so maybe she can count this a win—but she feels weak in a way that she hasn’t in weeks.

She thinks, absurdly, of Shay—of lying with her head in her lap, murmuring,  _Girls, man, they’ll fuck you up._  So that’s…not great. Not even okay. Just a pain in her chest and a girl she’s dragging into this shit against her will.

Well, not  _against_  her will, but definitely not, like, fully informed.

She goes to Shay and wants to say things like  _let’s slow things down_ and  _look, my life is too complicated to have another person in it right now._  Instead she smiles a wry smile and says  _I want to make out with you for, like, seven hours straight._

She gets a phone call in the middle of kissing Shay that might mean the key to this whole horrific puzzle. She listens, and then she shuts off her phone and presses against Shay harder, as if this girl could cure—everything.

She’s just right, really; twenty-five with bright eyes and a tendency toward the ethereal. A little young, a little smirky, a lot more earnest than anyone Cosima’s met in months. Shay wants someone to love, maybe, and Cosima just  _wants._ She pulls Shay so close that she can’t feel anything else and then she pushes her down against the bed like this is a game she can win. The delighted lilt of Shay’s laughter makes her believe for a second that maybe she’s not being cruel.

Shay’s records play scratchy in the background and Cosima loses her fighting spirit as quickly as it came. She sucks gentleness from Shay’s mouth, as if she could become a real person just from the press of her teeth against this girl’s lips. ( _Real,_ as in: not a factory-grown time bomb.) She holds Shay like a talisman and Shay betrays her, every time, with her humanity—reminding her of it with careful gentle words and the press of fingers against her skin.

 _Delphine,_  Cosima thinks again, and she wants to say— _I’m thinking about_ her, _I’m sorry, I know it’s not fair, but I can’t—stop—_

But Shay’s attention is distracting, all-encompassing; she holds Cosima with soft warm hands that splay across her hips and Cosima groans. This gentle girl—soft, overtly spiritual, apparently at peace with life and the universe and mortality—she’s  _getting_  to her.

She pulls her closer and sucks Shay’s lower lip between her teeth. She lets Shay press her back against the bed and pretends she isn’t hearing  _chérie_ echo in her head, isn’t thinking soft, biting words from a mouth that shapes them differently than Shay’s easy North American accent.

Shay takes her silence as a challenge; she grins into her mouth and then draws down to suck bruises into her thighs. She draws higher, mouth slick against Cosima’s skin, and Cosima closes her eyes and thinks  _Shay, Shay, Shay,_ as hard as she can—screws her eyes shut as if that will make her forget breathless French curses whispered against her lips. When Shay’s soft gentle laughter huffs against the tender skin of her inner thigh, Cosima grips the sheets hard to prevent herself from grabbing her by the hair and pulling her away. But Shay’s mouth reaches her and her hips lift toward her on their own.

It’s different, and in the difference she can forget for a moment—think, instead, about Shay’s warm hands and steady heartbeat, Shay’s laughing, unabashed approach to sex. It’s so much like Cosima-of-a-year-ago, fully-human Cosima, Cosima with a  _long and full life_  ahead of her.

She’d had her fortune told at a county fair way out of town when she was sixteen, dragged into the darkened booth by a sweet, flighty girl, and those were the words the fortune-teller used. The girl repeated them against her lips, laughing, at the top of the Ferris wheel, and that was the first time Cosima remembers feeling what she’d heard her parents call “teenage invincibility.” They said it in knowing voices over news stories about drunk drivers, her father clicking his tongue in some hybrid state of mourning and disapproval over the dead teenager behind the wheel. Cosima, lights spread out blurry below her while she gripped tight to this girl’s hand, felt something inside her soar, and she understood for a minute how someone could die just from thinking they couldn’t.

She tries to remember what it feels like, to embrace death because you know it’s not coming for you. She can’t—but Shay’s sweet, pretty smile reminds her of the girl in the Ferris wheel. Shay’s smiling up at her, saying,  _you okay?_  And Cosima nods, breathless;  _yeah, I’m fine—seriously, don’t stop._

Shay’s fingertips are light against her thighs. Her tongue is teasing and deliberate, and it overwhelms the edges of Cosima’s awareness, blunting the pains in her chest that are, these days, steady as a heartbeat. Here, in Shay’s bed, she can close her eyes without being afraid. For a minute. A minute is enough, some nights, and tonight it’s enough for the press and stroke of Shay’s tongue to draw out her orgasm until all the exhausted muscles of her body have fallen limp against the sheets. Shay crawls up to lie beside her and Cosima kisses her forehead and feels like, for a moment, it’s safe to live inside her head again.

She apologizes, sheepish;  _I swear I’m not usually, like, such a pillow princess, I’m just—_

 _Tired,_  says Shay, and she smiles and kisses the corner of Cosima’s mouth.  _I don’t mind._

They doze, on and off. Cosima wakes in the night feeling outside of time—no clock, no way of knowing how long she’s been asleep and how long she has left to sleep—and when she clears her throat she half-expects to taste blood. She wakes up again at sunrise, yellow light streaming through the window, and thinks  _Delphine, Delphine, Delphine_ like an ache.


End file.
